May Must Not Resume Churchill’s Bigotry, and Foster Must Not Return to Brookeborough’s Anti-Catholicism

Posted By: June 13, 2017

IRISH CONGRESSIONAL BRIEFING

Both should work to repeal Act of Settlement, 1701

CAPITOL HILL. Wednesday, June 14, 2017— The remarkable development in Irish-British politics—on the heels of Brexit— of the Tories forming a sort of coalition government with the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) of Northern Ireland has caused widespread concern among Irish-Americans.

The words of Fr. Sean Mc Manus at a Briefing some years ago at the United States State Department comes to mind: “Whenever things are going well in Northern Ireland, one can always expect England to screw it up.”

The same Fr. Mc Manus —President of the Capitol Hill-based Irish National Caucus said:“In the real world, it would be unrealistic not to expect Prime Minister May to save her government by forming a sort of coalition (‘confidence and supply’) with the DUP. Even Fianna Fail did as much with Fine Gael (historic opponents). However, the proposed Tory arrangement evokes ugly episodes of British chicanery in the past, which still shapes Northern Ireland today despite the promise of the Good Friday Agreement.

In 1893, Randolph Churchill, father of Winston, notoriously declared that the way to destroy Gladstone’s Second Home Rule Bill was to ‘play the Orange card’—that is, to manipulate, incite and inflame Protestant/Unionist/Loyalist sectarianism and Anti-Catholicism. And it worked like an evil charm. … Worked so well that a future Prime Minister of Northern Ireland,

Basil Brooke could proudly declare that he ‘didn’t have a Catholic about the place’ and he urged Protestants to only ‘hire good Protestant lads and lassies.’

Lord (as he later became) Brookeborough was from County Fermanagh, and so is Arlene Foster

(full disclosure, so am I, and proudly so). I respect Mrs. Foster and I had only great and good hopes for her. Now— as Tony Blair would say— the hand of history is on the shoulders of both Mrs. Foster and Mrs. May. Both are called to dramatically disassociate themselves from Randolph Churchill and Lord Brookeborough and prove the bad old days are gone forever.”

Fr. Mc Manus explained: “There is an excellent, just and honorable way for both Mrs. May and Mrs. Foster to signal a new beginning — and not just for The North, but for all of Ireland and Britain (England, Scotland and Wales). And that is to call for, and to work for the repeal of the Anti-Catholic sections of the Act of Settlement, 1701.This Act—the very foundation stone of the Royal Family, and , therefore, one of the most important British laws— bars a Catholic from inheriting the English Throne. In other words, constitutionally enshrining, justifying and mandating sectarianism, intolerance and Anti-Catholicism at the very heart of the unwritten and non-codified British Constitution…. Like having a provision in the U.S. Constitution barring a Black person from being President.

Fr. Mc Manus concluded: “The extreme, fundamentalist Orangemen did not enact this shameful intolerant Act— the English Monarch and Parliament did, and it is they who have maintained it to this very moment. However, while the Act today may mean little to the ordinary Englishman, the Act is of very real importance to a significant section of the Protestant/Unionist/Loyalist community. Protestant/Unionist/Loyalist leaders have consistently emphasized that their allegiance is not just to the British Crown, but rather Protestant succession to the British Throne. Now, two brave women could change disgraceful English history.”